A Hole in the Heart
by paired discontinuity
Summary: [Next - rewrite!AU] One's supposed to save the world. He's destroying it. The rest are supposed to be a team. They're pretty much anything but. And if they don't fix things soon, they'll be doomed. Or maybe they're already doomed. Oh dear.
1. 1

**A/N:** _Hi! Remi here, with a new drabblechap for your entertainment. This one's for the Valentines Advent (2016), bonus 2, and since it's a tag-team prompt, it's for the both of us. We'll be alternating every few chapters, depending on the luck of the dice (so, sadly, Aiko won't be here till Ch 5). But we've got plenty in store; it is a season rewrite after all._

 _Enjoy!_

* * *

 **A Hole in the Heart**

 **1.**

Not every digimon had a human partner, but every illegal one did and that would be their salvation.

Hopefully. At the moment, it was more like the fruit for their destruction. Because it had to be an illegal digimon who could drag the others away from the data-stream and watch them starve and rot. It had to be an illegal digimon that could drag them into that human world: that stage they interacted with behind the barrier but never touched. And it had to be an illegal digimon that could throw a gauntlet from the other side and destroy what should be, in that context, indestructible.

A normal digimon could destroy as well, but not through the barrier like that. And they couldn't fight back for the same reason. The barrier was in the way and they couldn't tear it down either because that would unleash an even more terrible doom upon them.

And that left only the other illegal digimon. Like himself, but there were others too. Their partners across the barrier, unaware of the black knight that fluttered between their worlds.

He was reluctant. He'd known his partner a long time, after all. But it was necessary. For both their worlds.


	2. 2

**2.**

Tsurugi had left another message.

Shou blocked out the sound of his mother's voice on the other side of the door. It was always something. Food. The shower. Cleaning up the room a little. Phone calls from Tsurugi. The first three were a little necessary. The last...he could definitely do without.

Even if one of his messages had been waxing knowledge he didn't even possess. Must have been Kitajima's influence. No way Tsurugi would remember the rule of threes long enough to recite it. Not that it mattered anyway. Three years was a long time, and it wasn't like he was lacking hope anyway. He was simply doing something about it. Whatever his parents wanted to say with how much time he spent on his computer in his room. No matter what his so-called friends wanted to say, in their efforts to make him forget as well, forget like they'd forgotten, like they'd abandoned her.

Well, he wasn't going to forget. Or give up. He was going to find a way into the digital world - and then he was going to pull her back out of it.

Another battle alert. A new digimon this time. A piximon.

 _Are you my ticket in?_


	3. 3

**3.**

Shou ignored him again. He toyed with asking Ami, who'd come over to help him with his math homework, to call, but chances were that she'd have as much luck as him. In other words, none.

He sighed, then logged onto the terminal again. At least Shou hadn't bothered to hide himself here and Ami was just as eager to glimpse him again so she didn't complain. Or...he - Shou - had tried to hide himself, but there wasn't anyone else he knew with a Peckmon as their partner and he was easy enough to find. Always fighting. Always getting stronger. Unlike the Shou of old who wouldn't want to get into fights at all because Peckmon might get hurt.

 _'Hey. Aren't we going to fight?'_

'Sorry buddy,' he said aloud to his own partner, to Greymon. 'I was just watching - ' And then he blinked. The screen had changed. A piximon took up most of it, its lips moving and the words it spoke crawled onto the screen.

'Illegal?' Ami repeated.

And then the screen was back, and Greymon was locked in a fight with Peckmon.


	4. 4

**4.**

Greymon was vastly outmatched. Tsurugi had never appreciated Shou's skill as a tamer until that battle. Never thought there was such a difference between them. _Is that why you won't talk to us?_ Or was he trying to become stronger for some other reason.

Protect shattered. Greymon shattered too. Tsurugi sent his chair spiralling away and Ami shrieked in surprise. He noticed neither of those things. 'Stop!' They keyboard seemed too far away - and there was no emergency exit anyway. Not for the digimon.

And why - why would Shou even go for the kill? And against Greymon no less?

But then Peckmon was gone, and there was a Gururumon in its place, sleek fur black and snarling, snarling as though it was in the room with them.

And then a paw came out of the computer and Ami was pulling Tsurugi away from the computer, out of the bedroom.

Padded footsteps and thudding heart beats followed them. And the hiss they could barely hear through fear and that clouted throat. Whispers of 'Illegal, illegal.'

Illegal?!


	5. 5

Shou awoke to the sound of his racing heart. Illegal, chanted his mind, illegal.

Murderer.

He checked his terminal. Peckmon was there. Peckmon was alive and healing in the pod like he had done it before blacking out -and he hadn't, if nothing else, he cared enough to remember that-

His V-Pet chirruped ominously and he hurried to the computer. The monitor had steam coming off of it, which considering it was also his computer, was very bad. He hurried to look it over.

After a restart, it seemed perfectly fine, except-

A strange hexagon lingered there, and it would not fade.


	6. 6

Failure.

He would have hit something if it was in his nature. Even now it wasn't. Even now that made him tremble. It didn't make his partner tremble of course not but it didn't need to. He would keep growing stronger and stronger, wild and unforgiven until, until-

The world was new and clean again, good for her, for Digimon everywhere.

But there was much left to do.

His fingers trembled and his soul grew.


	7. 7

Tsurugi barely looked at Greymon -or his egg, rather- but he tried, he tried to look for Shou. What had happened to him? He was there too? Was Peckmon okay?

Ami said not to worry. Said she would call, she would fret and it would be fine because it was in the mold. Forget the mold they were friends, right?

Of course they were, Ami told him. But something's important to Shou.

And didn't that make it important to all of them?

A nagging pair of figures muddled through his brain like a loose tooth. Then they were forgotten.


	8. 8

**8.**

Shou fixed it, fixed his computer, fixed his head and his work and kept training. Peckmon whispered gently, making sure he slept and ate and took care of himself He never insisted on outside, never.

Until the black wolf came again.

Slobbering at the computer, snarling at Shou, prepared to reach and reach and reach.

But human fingers tugged him forward before he could think of retreating and then his room was gone.

HE was looking at blue sky all on its own for the first time in a long time.


	9. 9

**9.**

Greymon's egg didn't hatch that week. Nor did Shou pick up. Finally, even Ami gave up calling and they caught a bus over.

Friends from school intercepted them on the way, and they allowed themselves to be pulled into a Terminal because an hour here or there wouldn't make too much of a difference, right?

Except there was that snarling black wolf on the screen when they logged in, pacing angrily.


	10. 10

**10.**

It saw them. It couldn't miss them, with how the terminals threw them into scenes with pretty bright lights. And all they had defending them was a Pichimon who had zero battling experience and an egg.

Tsurugi threw himself in front of Ami and her Pichimon anyway. If anything, he'd put up the better fight.

Against a wolf. That had sharp teeth. And claws.

 _I am so dead._

Behind him, Ami screamed.


	11. 11

**11.**

Considering a black wolf had just appeared on his computer, he probably didn't have the time for sky-gazing, but when he sat up and looked around, there was only Peckmon nearby.

So he petted those moltly feathers and looked up some more. The sky...so big and wide and full of both hope and despair. _Where are you?_

Someone screamed right then. A girl. But not the right one. He'd know her voice anywhere.

Still, he and Peckmon take off towards the cry. He wasn't even sure why.


	12. 12

**12.**

The wolf had found new quarry when he vanished, it seemed. Familiar quarry. Tsurugi and that girl friend of his, and a Pichimon. Where was the Greymon he'd been battling before the wolf had so rudely interrupted them?

Oh, that egg. Unsurprisingly pathetic of Tsurugi. _Why did I even bother battling him?_

Still, Pichimon against a big bad wolf was not a good match-up. And he had business with said wolf in any case. 'Peckmon, engage!'


	13. 13

**13.**

Peckmon was struggling. The wolf was tough, and it was only the other's jumping abilities that had saved his hide more than once.

But Peckmon wasn't going to win. Not like this. And not when the others couldn't help. Any moment, it could slip past Peckmon and attack.

He gritted his teeth, then hooked one arm under Tsurugi's and the other under the other girls, and dragged them both away.

He wasn't losing Peckmon playing the hero.


End file.
